The class of 2010 is hard to class-ify

The Class of 2010, 680 strong, arrived, laptops and longboards in hand, for orientation on Aug. 18. Nearly 75 percent are from outside Washington, converging on Tacoma from 37 states. As a group, females outnumber males by a few. The youngest is 17; the oldest 20. There are two sets of twins and one set of triplets. And they’re a bright bunch (you were expecting otherwise?) with average SAT scores of 1,250 and average GPAs of 3.55. Twenty-one percent are in the top 5 percent of their high school class and almost 40 percent are in the top 10 percent. But that doesn’t mean this class is a bunch of stodgy intellectuals. Among them also can be found:

a belly dancer

a former Daffodil queen and princess

a sailor who has traveled around the world and composed a piece that was performed by the Seattle Chamber Players in Benaroya Hall

a Midwesterner who proposed the name “Puget Sound” for his garage band

a rower who won the Groton Cup in the Women’s Henley Regatta

a bingo caller at a Presbyterian Home

a stilt walker who performs marimba in a Zimbabwean music group

an all-league quarterback and all-league pitcher

a rugby player and Eagle Scout who donated his hair to Locks of Love

a young woman who has run camps for children in the Ukraine and who cleans model homes to support herself

a synchronized swim team member who wrote her application essay on Jethro Tull

a student whose family lives in a one-room cabin without electricity or plumbing in the middle of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument